Advisory:

Boxes

Icebreakers

Middle School Science Minute

Getting Their Names Right

I was recently reading the Summer, 2017 issue of “The Science Teacher,” a magazine written for high school science teachers, published by the National Science Teachers Association.

In this issue, I read the the “Health Wise” section article, “Getting Their Names Right.” It was written by Michael Bratsis. Even though the article was written for a high school audience, it is very appropriate for middle school teachers and describes how mispronounced names can add to the difficulties that students have in the classroom.

Resources:

Wilson Center

The first thing teachers should do when school starts is talk about hatred in America. Here’s help.

#CharlottesvilleCurriculum: That’s the new Twitter hashtag for educators, parents and anyone else looking for resources to lead discussions with young people about the violence that just erupted in Charlottesville, when white supremacists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members marched and clashed with counterprotesters. One woman was killed and 19 were injured when a car rammed into the counterprotesters, and two state police officers assisting in the response died when their helicopter crashed on the outskirts of town.

10 things every white teacher should know when talking about race

Why Do We Murder the Beautiful Friendships of Boys?

Research shows that between 1999 and 2010 suicide among men, age 50 and over, rose by nearly 50%. The New York Times reports that “the suicide rate for middle-aged men was 27.3 deaths per 100,000, while for women it was 8.1 deaths per 100,000.”

Driven by our collective assumption that the friendships of boys are both casual and interchangeable, along with our relentless privileging of romantic love over platonic love, we are driving boys into lives Professor Way describes as “autonomous, emotionally stoic, and isolated.” What’s more, the traumatic loss of connection for boys Way describes is directly linked to our struggles as men in every aspect of our lives.

In America, men perform masculinity within a narrow set of cultural rules often called the Man Box. Charlie Glickman explains it beautifully here. One of the central tenets of the man box is the subjugation of women and by extension, all things feminine. Since we Americans hold emotional connection as a female trait, we reject it in our boys, demanding that they “man up” and adopt a strict regimen of emotional independence, even isolation as proof they are real men. Behind the drumbeat message that real men are stoic and detached, is the brutal fist of homophobia, ready to crush any boy who might show too much of the wrong kind of emotions.

And so, by late adolescence, boys declare over and over “no homo” following any intimate statement about their friends.

And so, there it is, the smoking gun, the toxic poison that is leading to the life killing epidemic of loneliness for men, (and by extension, women,) look no further. It’s right there: “no homo.”